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As the Cyberlaw Clinic has continued to deepen its practice in AI-generated art (and as AI art has increasingly cropped up in the news), it’s become clear that developers and artists are looking for guidance on how to handle rights in these new works. Clinical Instructors Jessica Fjeld and Mason Kortz have previously written about how to conceptualize the anatomy of AI art for rights purposes; translating that theory into practice was an obvious next step, and today marks the release of a new set of templates created with input from Sarah Schwettmann and SJ Klein of MIT.

The Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief (pdf) last week in the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on behalf of a group of former United States Magistrate Judges, supporting the unsealing of government surveillance orders and applications. The brief supports Jason Leopold, a BuzzFeed News journalist, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (“RCFP”). The appeal arises out of a petition that Leopold filed in the D.C. District Court to unseal applications and orders for pen registers, trap and trace devices, tracking devices, stored email, and other types of surveillance, many of which remain sealed indefinitely in practice. He argued that, once the seal is no longer necessary, public access to these judicial records is required under the First Amendment and common law right of access to court records. Leopold was later joined by RCFP.

The Cyberlaw Clinic is hiring summer interns for 2019! Come join a dynamic team working on important issues related to technology and the law.

Summer legal interns work on all aspects of the Cyberlaw Clinic’s caseload and, like Fall and Spring semester students, take the lead on the projects they join, supported by the Clinic staff. Although Clinic projects vary from summer to summer, they often include substantive law related to the First Amendment, computer security, digital privacy, intellectual property, civic innovation, emerging technologies, and media and the arts. The Clinic also has a growing practice relating to AI, including with regard to criminal justice, human rights, and creative practice. Interns will be involved in supporting the Clinic’s ongoing docket and in planning decisions about clients, cases, and topic areas to be addressed in the Clinic’s work during the upcoming academic year.

Check out the full job posting for more information and application instructions.

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The Cyberlaw Clinic is pleased to announce the release of “A Preservationist’s Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation,” a document created in collaboration with the Software Preservation Network and hosted on the SPN website. The guide —authored by fall 2018 Cyberlaw Clinic student Kee Young Lee and Clinical Fellow Kendra Albert — builds on work that the Clinic and SPN have done together over the past year on the 2018 round of anti-circumvention exemptions announced by the Copyright Office in October of this year.

As we noted in a previous blog post, the Copyright Office conducts a rulemaking every three years to identify situations in which individuals should be exempt from liability under Section 1201 of the Copyright Act in cases where they circumvent a “technical measure that effectively controls access” to a copyrighted work. We were pleased that the latest round of exemptions included one that allows libraries, archives, and museums to circumvent technological protection measures on certain lawfully acquired software for the purposes of preserving software and materials that depend on it. The guide released today aims to frame that exemption in useful, practical terms for the librarians and archivists who will rely on and benefit from it. “Getting the exemption is just the first step — SPN and the Cyberlaw Clinic are dedicated to supporting practitioners in using the exemption to preserve software,” said Mx. Albert. “This is the first of a set of guides we plan to release to help institutions make the most of their rights under the law.”

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The Cyberlaw Clinic is thrilled to have supported our friend Ji Qie and the rest of the team that launched patentpandas.org this week. The site aims to “help make patent law friendly for everyone,” offers stories from “[e]veryday people” about “their patent adventures and misadventures,” and provides a wide range of resources for creators and entrepreneurs about interacting with the patent system. Legal resources on the site address issues like “What Can Be Patented?” and “I Got a Cease and Desist Letter!.” Fall 2018 Clinic student Carol Lin worked with the Cyberlaw Clinic’s Assistant Director, Jessica Fjeld, to guide the project. (Photo credit: Andy Sellars.)

Content regulation emerged as a controversial topic earlier this year after right-wing personality and frequent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones had his Infowars podcast removed from most platforms, including Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and RadioPublic. Amid a social media firestorm, platforms rushed to ban Jones, sometimes within hours of each other, and often without articulating how exactly Jones’ speech violated their terms. The incident drew attention to the ethical and logistical challenges podcasting platforms face in balancing safety, diversity, and respect for free speech principles when articulating what content they allow on their services, and the difficulties in implementing such policies consistently.

Yesterday, the Library of Congress handed a significant win to digital preservationists. On October 26, 2018, the Library of Congress granted an exemption to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision for libraries, archives, and museums to circumvent technological protection measures on certain lawfully acquired software for the purposes of preserving software and materials that depend on it. This exemption will significantly reduce the legal risk involved in preserving software that is no longer available for purchase. The new exemptions will go into effect on October 28, 2018. The announcement came after a year of rulemaking proceedings before the Copyright Office, and the involvement of several semesters of Clinic students, including Evelyn Chang, Anderson Grossman, Jillian Goodman, Erika Herrera, Austin Bohn, and Erin Thomas. You can read our previous blog posts about the Clinic’s involvement here and here. →

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The Cyberlaw Clinic recently filed an amicus brief (pdf) in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, on behalf of Engine Advocacy, a non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of the startup community, and Santa Clara University School of Law Professor Eric Goldman. The case involved a dispute between Airbnb, Inc. and a residential leasing company, Aimco, Inc., about the proper application of 47 U.S.C. § 230, a section of the Communications Decency Act that immunizes platforms against liability arising out of third-party speech. →

The Clinic has had the honor of working over the past year, along with our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to support Jeremy Rubin in his efforts to register the domain name, fucknazis.us. Jeremy created his website and registered the domain back in 2017 and began offering a “virtual lapel pin” that allowed Ethereum (a popular digital currency) users to support opposition to anti-semitic and white supremacist conduct in the United States around the time of the tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia last summer. The domain name registrar initially allowed Jeremy’s registration, then abruptly terminated it (citing the use of the word “fuck” in the name). We are pleased to note that—after a lot of back and forth (and significant patience on Jeremy’s part)—the domain name is now (back) in Jeremy’s hands and the site is now (back) up and running. We are also pleased that this incident prompted re-evaluation of a policy and practice of the United States Department of Commerce with respect to the .us top level domain (or “TLD”) that clearly violated the First Amendment.

The Cyberlaw Clinic is pleased to welcome back returning 2Ls and 3Ls and welcome new 1Ls and LLMs to Cambridge for the start of the 2018-19 academic year! We hope that everyone had a restful and reinvigorating summer. As we ramp up for the fall semester, we offer some announcements about the program and thoughts on the coming year.→

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